2nd attempt..

After the tips i got on the last thread i went out for my 2nd shot at bird photography. Im getting the hang of this lens (sigma in sig) although 300mm is just slightly not enough and i have to crop them down more than i would like. C&C by all means welcome. All 300mm handheld.

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Nice shot of the lapwing. Ruffled feathers and all.

like the lapwing reece, nice and fluffy, mine was sleek. Nice pose of the duck. You will have to buy an extender i guess.

Thanks Steven and Catsith. I don't think an extender on this lense would work very well since its pretty soft at 300 already. It should be enough for now but im on the big save to a 100-400 L IS. only $1500 to go!!! lol.

All quite nice captures, keep up the good work. Alot of people prefer 400mm as a starting point to birding. But really you can do it with almost any focal distance it just takes different skill's/techniques. I would not use a Tcon at all with that lens as you will find the IQ will suffer quite a bit. And it would most certainly mean loss of accurate AF.

Good job on the focus in all of these images though, your doing well. Keep at it and most of all, enjoy it.

mitcon, what about a tcon on a 70-300 f4 canon is? or using a tube?

Don't you lose AF after f/5.6 on 350D/30D? Thanks for the reply Mitcon, i shall indeed keep practicing and im really enjoying it. Takes my mind of bloody uni once and awhile.

Nice shots, I love the masked lapwing, well done.

Ospi, these are much much better than the previous batch. Love the #1 especially. Great composition, low angle, perfect focus, nice colors. Well done.

Listen to Mitcon. I learned a lot from this man and i still do. You will lose AF if the max aperture is smaller than f5.6 on 20D/30D/350D/400D body. So, adding a 1.4x tc not only will cause IQ lost, you can only MF. Nothing is wrong with MF though. It's just the dim viewfinder on these bodies makes it harder.

300mm is a good starting range for bird shooter. My first tele for birds was a EF 100-300mm. The techniques and skills that i gained from using that lens, help tremendously when i upgraded to Bigma. So, you are off a good start. Just practice hard with what you have, and don't hesitate to post questions here should they arise.

Keep shooting and posting.

The first shot proves that 300mm is reasonable length to get a good capture of a bird, though bird photographers always like to get that extra length, especially when it comes to photographing smaller birds or others just perched that bit far away and Mitcon is right, it's the techniques and skills will get you the decent shot whatever mm you have with your lens.
You have done that with your first shot.
It also shows that you are thinking of composing your shots, take the last shot, it appears that you lowered yourself to get this shot to get a good low level shot of this bird, that is indeed a recommendation. But though you have got close enough and got quality in your shot of the bird there is the distracting leaves, Sometimes it's not easy to avoid distraction before the bird but we have to think of a way to avoid these distractions, this comes in time with what has been said, skill and techniques.
Good work on your shots.

Re: AF with converters - don't forget that some converters (the Kenko Pro 300 DG and Tamron equivalent) will AF in good light on non "1" bodies.

Or there's the "taped pin" trick...

Having said that, converters aren't really meant for the slower zoom 300s like the Sigma 70-300.